VCARD, sometimes referred to as vCard, is a popular format developed to exchange personal business information. VCARD was developed to allow individuals to easily share contact information with other people. A VCARD file includes text information usually showing an individual's name, home and business addresses, phone numbers and photograph along with the logo of a company or enterprise affiliated with the individual.
A VCARD is the electronic equivalent of the paper visit card or traditional business card. It presents business and/or personal contact information either necessary or desirable for an individual's client, prospective client, friend or other contact to interact with the individual. VCARDs utilize a standard file format and usually are attached to e-mail messages.
Some high level applications offer the option of sending a VCARD during a Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) communication. This allows participants to exchange exact and updated information about them and provide visual information like an enterprise logo or the participant's position/job title in the enterprise.
During a VOIP communication, users often desire to send a VCARD that fully suits the enterprise graphical chart. However, a VCARD is displayed in the same manner, no matter the identity of the caller or business entity of the caller. MS Outlook always displays a VCARD using a “Contact Card” template which means that the information present in the VCARD varies, but the presentation (except for logo) remains unaltered.
The VCARD graphical chart of an enterprise describes the size of the VCARD, the background of the VCARD, and the color, type and size for the display of the various information presented on the VCARD. This chart is defined by the enterprise and is the same for all employees at the enterprise. Only information about the employee himself changes from one VCARD to another within an enterprise.
Each enterprise has a graphical chart which typically includes the logo of an enterprise and often contains a complex definition of a set of regulations for text items (e.g. an enterprise wants “job description” to always be displayed using Arial-10pt-Bold-Black).
In most applications displaying VCARDs, including softphone applications, this information is lost because all VCARDS are displayed using a common template. Only information about the sender of the VCARD is different.
The best existing solution known today for exchange of VCARDS in VOIP communications is described in WO/2008/046697, a patent published in April 2008 and entitled “Enrichment of the Signaling in a Communication Session of ‘Push to Talk’ Type by Inserting a Business Card.”
This patent describes the way for a caller to send his VCARD to the call recipient in a way that permits the call recipient to know the identity of the caller. The solution presented in this patent utilizes the Session Description Protocol (SDP) portion of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) invite message to deliver the VCARD.
Under current technology, for two correspondents using the same softphone client application, two VCARDs always look the same. The only difference between the two VCARDs of two individuals at two different enterprises involves personal information (photo, name, phones, email addresses, job description) listed on the VCARDs and the enterprise logo on the VCARDs. In other words, the presentation format of the VCARDs is similar and will not serve to differentiate two different callers from two different enterprises without careful inspection of the VCARD information and logo.
When an individual is receiving a call from caller 1 or caller 2, the look and feel of the application will always be the same (for example using My Instant Communicator).
The only visual difference between two different callers can be seen through the enterprise logo of the caller. The graphical chart of the enterprise (visible on paper visit cards) is not displayed. As a result, two paper business cards that are very different result in two very similar looking cards in the softphone.
While information included in the VCARD is very important to identify someone, it is equally important for purposes of quick identification of a party for the information contained in the enterprise graphical chart of the business card to be displayed.
Hence, there is a need in the art for a convenient to use, reliable, inexpensive and efficient method and device for displaying VCARDs that include the graphical chart of the enterprise to allow recipients of the VCARDs to readily distinguish cards from two separate individuals at two separate enterprises.